So much rhubarb!

So, it would appear that a recent day of heavy rain, followed by an unseasonably warm sunny spell, has brought on the start of rhubarb season!
Not only is my plant in the garden finally producing as it ought to be, I seem to have a field of it at the allotment. I don't know how many plants there are altogether. I thought there were 3, but I'm now wondering if there are more. When I popped down there yesterday I found this:

So I filled a carrier bag and brought it home. I set about adding lots of rhubarb recipes to my Pinterest board, and decided that a rhubarb meringue pie would be a great place to start. The perfect dessert for this hot weather! Once again I used The Caked Crusader's recipe. I've only made 2 things from this blog, but both have turned out fantastically so I think I will be a regular visitor from now on!

The rhubarb looked lovely all chopped up..

 I definitely think I'll be getting my allotment rental moneys worth in rhubarb alone. This was only about 7 sticks!

The finished meringue!

My slice. Note the al fresco dining, in March!

Sewing

My second project - a cushion cover. I'm really pleased with it and I LOVE the fabric. It's not perfect  - the print on the back is side-on, perhaps I can pretend that it was meant to be that way? There seems to be a lot of faff with sewing but then all of a sudden it comes together really quickly and you have something really cool that only took you an hour or two. I love it. More than crochet, I think. Over the past 6 months or so I've gone on a bit of a journey from "oh, I wish I could craft but I just can't" to just giving things a go and discovering that I have hidden hobbies.

My next project will probably be a cutlery roll to take camping, although I'm also going to be working on a top secret project for Mother's Day when the materials arrive.

Cherry Bakewells

Last night I made 24 cherry bakewells. Just a standard Friday night :)

I followed The Caked Crusader's recipe but with a couple of adjustments. Firstly, I had some morello cherry jam in the fridge from when I made the wonderful cherry bakewell cake a few weeks ago. I'm practically drooling at the memory of just how amazing that cake was. So I used that instead of strawberry jam. Also, I had some of that new(ish) fondant icing sugar just waiting to find its purpose in life, and I thought that might work well on top of cherry bakewells. I used natural coloured glace cherries, because that was what I had in the cupboard, and I halved them. For some reason the recipe gave me 24 little cakes rather than 14. No complaints! We managed to hold out until 9am this morning but then we caved and had to try one. They're delicious!

The recipe used 3 eggs, so that leaves us with 'only' about 20 to get through..

Wow, I haven't said anything for a very long time. I would like to get into this again.

Since I last updated I have continued to learn to crochet and have made a cushion cover, plus some rather funky scarves for the girls for Christmas:

I treated myself to a Valentine's Day present of a sewing machine, a rather funky Janome SMD2000. It was more than I wanted to spend, but my mum convinced me that it was a really good one. It has a needle threader! And all sorts of stitches that I may never use! I hope it will last me my entire sewing life, and possibly be fit for passing on at the end of it, so I don't feel too bad. Last weekend I got some fabrics and made a start on PE bags for the girls:

I'm quite pleased with them, as are the girlies. I have some patterns (pyjamas and 2 types of dress), a book full of inspiration, and Cath Kidston's Patch to work on next. I need more fabric though. Lots more fabric. I sense that this could be an expensive hobby!

The chickens are still doing well. They enjoy free ranging when I'm at home, and reluctantly stick to their pen when I'm not. They still lay an egg each almost every single day which is amazing, and rather overwhelming. There are only so many pancakes, poached eggs and cakes one can eat! I've given some away and sold some at work, and they do make me feel quite proud. I even brought some in to make pancakes with the children on Pancake Day.

The allotment is doing well. I think. I've figured out (and in the end it wasn't that hard, I just *blush* read the labels) that the fruit cage holds a gooseberry, 2 blackcurrants and a redcurrant! The rhubarb is looking VERY promising:

This is a photo of my little slaves helpers, planting some Summer flower bulbs.

So far, apart from the pre existing fruit, I've planted some broad beans (must plant 2nd lot asap), peas (think they died), elephant garlic, normal garlic, onions and carrots so far. We have sweet peas on a windowsill, and artichokes, although none have germinated and it's been 2 weeks.

Here's to blogging more in 2012!

Chick chick chick chick chickens!

I can't believe I didn't get around to posting about the chickens! The Summer was busy and the start of term has been even busier, and time is flying by. They've been with us for 10 days now and seem to be settling in nicely. I've not noticed any problem with them establishing pecking order, they did peck each other a bit at first but nobody got hurt and it seems to have calmed down for now. They eat well (I think) and drink well. They like tipping their water feeder over and making a big muddy patch. They enjoy scratching around in the dirt, the Easibed I put down looks awful already and I'm not entirely sure what its purpose is! The roof is keeping them nice and dry when it rains. I haven't seen a fox yet. They went fairly nuts when they saw Phoebe the cat so I can imagine they will alert me if I'm around when a fox comes to call! I haven't let them out of their pen yet, but I think I probably will at some point.

 This is Lucy with Bellatrix. She's *gorgeous* - she's black but her feathers have a sort of metallic green tinge to them.

 Hermione at the front and Ginny at the back. Ginny is quite nervy and looks like she's going to be absolutely massive. She still has some of her white juvenile feathers which I'm hoping won't all fall out, because they're quite distinctive! The Omlet man said she looks more mature than Hermione despite the feathers. Hermione is a character. She's forever trying to peck at my red Crocs. How they can look tasty I don't know! She also adores sweetcorn.

 On Saturday, just 4 days after the chooks arrived, the girls found an egg! It absolutely made their day, we were all SO thrilled. Sadly it's been the only one so far an I'm beginning to wonder if we imagined it.. but when they're properly laying it's going to be AMAZING and I can't wait. It will make all the poo worth it :)

I love this one :)

35g! Aww.

Allotment plans..

I would like to grow:

Maincrop potatoes, anything that roasts & mashes well because that's what I mainly use spuds for
Garlic - thinking of elephant garlic
Red onions and normal onions - not crazy amounts, although I will make red onion marmalade with some and dehydrate the rest
Squashes and pumpkins. Perhaps something giant to keep the girls interested, plus butternut squash (surely they have to grow for me at some point?!) and crown prince, my favourites
Beetroot
Sweetcorn
Sunflowers, again to keep the girls interested!

There will no doubt be more when I get the Spring seed catalogues. Can't wait.

And in other news.. 8 days til we get our chickens!! Sooooo excited! 

Allotment!

I finally got down there for another nose this evening. I'm so thrilled. OK, so it's a lot of work, and getting the weeds and bolted things up isn't going to be much fun. But all that growing space will be brilliant. Also it has an existing fruit cage and a big rhubarb plant, and a little strawberry patch. I'm a little paranoid that the old (still just about existing) owner will come and remove everything, but I think the chances are pretty low.

The fruit cage is home to a load of raspberry canes with lots of lovely ripe untouched fruit on them, and what appears to be 2 gooseberry bushes and 2 blackcurrant bushes! I'm SO HAPPY about this!!!










I'm also considering investing in a food dehydrator. My current top choice is the Stockli model, as it's not extortionately expensive but seems a decent one. I'll be buying some of the fruit leather inserts because fruit leathers are amazing and we all love them. I must admit that my primary reason for considering getting one was the leather aspect, but it seems you can also dehydrate things like onions and courgettes, and then rehydrate them for use in cooking throughout the year. It seems an ideal way of coping with gluts of things (ha, fat chance of that this year!) and takes way less space than trying to store things in a 'cool dry place' or the freezer. It might end up gathering dust like so many of my other gadgets, but so far I'm hopeful :)  Especially now I'm going to have lots of different kinds of berries to experiment with!